The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventor(s), to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
A digital signal processor (DSP) is a type of processor that performs specific routines to process digital signals. DSPs are often adapted to efficiently perform specific routines on a particular type of digital signal. For example, a DSP may be designed for filtering and generating digitized analog signals in a modem. Another DSP may be designed for processing signaling information in an electronic telephone switching system. In either case, an architecture of each DSP is designed to promote increased efficiency with the respective specific routines. A DSP may have an architecture with specialized registers and arithmetic circuits tailored for the specific routines. Such an architecture improves processing efficiencies for the specific routines, but also limits the DSP from performing a wide array of routines. In general, this results in a different DSP being designed and manufactured for each different set of routines. Designing and manufacturing multiple different DSPs can be costly.
By contrast, an architecture of a generalized processor is designed with general purpose registers and arithmetic circuits for processing a wide array of processing routines. For example, while a DSP may only process audio signals, a generalized processor may perform text editing, spreadsheet processing, graphics processing, audio processing, and so on. A generalized architecture permits processing of these different types of routines, but the generalized architecture is less efficient. This reduced efficiency occurs due to components being designed to handle the wide array of routines instead of being designed to efficiently handle just a few routines. In summary, when designing and implementing a processor (e.g., DSP or general processor) tradeoffs occur based on robust processing abilities, costs, and processing efficiency.